Fair Coin (18 page)

Nathaniel laughed. “That's funny. I was going to ask for
your
help. I've been waiting to go home for ten years. If you can get the controller, I'll set the coordinates for wherever you want, as long as you promise to drop me off in my own universe first. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Nathaniel stood, and they shook hands. It was strange seeing the man his friend might become one day. He'd gotten at least a foot taller than Ephraim.

What had the older Ephraim been like?

Nathaniel tucked his hands into his deep coat pockets. “Good luck, kid.”

“Do I find you…here?” Ephraim looked around the park dubiously. Nathaniel was probably homeless. In more than one sense of the word, he realized.

“I live in one of the old cottages behind the mansion.”

“You're squatting?” Ephraim asked.

“I got a job as a caretaker of the old Greystone property. They're talking about turning the main building into a museum one day, but they can't do that if it's been vandalized. Besides, it helps me keep an eye on things around here,” Nathaniel said, turning to leave. “Try to stay out of trouble.”

“Hey, I almost forgot,” Ephraim called. “Why does the gyro look like a quarter?”

“Ephraim had been carrying that quarter around since high school, doing magic tricks with it. It only seemed appropriate.” Nathaniel walked off down a path to the right of the fountain and soon disappeared among the trees.

Ephraim had learned a lot about the coin, but he had even more questions than before. What kind of freaky future universe had Nathaniel come from? What was the purpose of the Charon device? How had Ephraim's older analog died?

The hardest question to answer was: how could he steal the controller from Nate?

Ephraim didn't know this twisted version of his friend well enough to get close to him—but he knew someone who did. And he was counting on her to be as smart as her counterpart in his home universe.

Summer school was worse than Ephraim had imagined. The building wasn't air-conditioned, so by the time he reached his locker he was already drenched in sweat. He spun the dial, hoping its combination was the same.

Ephraim felt a cool hand on his arm. “What are you doing here?” Zoe's voice hissed behind him.

“I've already missed a lot of school,” Ephraim said. “I don't want to fall even farther behind.”

“Stop fooling around. This is serious. You know you don't belong here.” She pushed her bangs out of her face and glared at him.

Ephraim turned and casually leaned against his locker. He ran his eyes over Zoe. She wore a white short-sleeved blouse and khaki shorts with a pair of green flip-flops. Her hair was tied back into a ponytail, and now that he saw her in the daylight he noticed that she was tanner than Jena. “Are you actually worried about me, or do you not want me around because I remind you of him?”

Zoe narrowed her eyes. “I just don't have any interest in giving Nate what he wants. Are you carrying the coin now?”

Ephraim nodded.

“Idiot. That's your only way home. What if he takes it? You'll be stuck here.”

“I'm stuck here anyway until I can recharge it, and I don't have a good place to hide it. Besides, I actually came here because I wanted to see you,” he said.

She tilted her head. Ephraim described what he'd found at his apartment.

“I warned you not to go there,” she said with a sick expression on her face.

“Tell me what happened, Zoe.”

“The papers said it looked like a murder-suicide. They think David Scott did it.”

“I bet Nate framed him. Did they find a gun? Did the papers say?”

Zoe shrugged and avoided eye contact with him. “You don't know what Ephraim's father was like. He could have done it, I think. The cops wanted to talk to Ephraim, but I told them he was with me that night.”

“I suppose it looked suspicious when he disappeared.”

She nodded. “Since Nate was gone, too, I told them they'd left on a trip, that he needed time to deal with their deaths.”

Ephraim twisted the combination lock to the right and popped the latch. It opened. A folded piece of paper fluttered to the floor. For a moment he thought he was experiencing déjá vu.

Ephraim crouched and opened the note. “Welcome home” was written at the top, in Nate's handwriting. Below it was a dark and grainy photo of Jena's body floating in the fountain.

“Bastard,” he said. He couldn't take his eyes away from the grisly image. Jena.

“What is that?” Zoe reached for the paper, and he jerked it away from her grasp.

“You don't want to see this,” Ephraim said. He rose slowly, his eyes fixed on the photo.

Zoe slammed her hand against the locker next to his. “Don't do that to me. Don't try to protect me. Let me help you, okay?” She crossed her arms.

More students were filing sullenly into the hallway. They glanced at him and Zoe curiously as they passed—especially him. The sound of lockers slamming, books shuffling, and voices whispering filled the hall.

Ephraim passed the note to her silently. She didn't say anything while he gathered some textbooks and slipped them into his backpack. He didn't have any idea what he would need.

Zoe crumpled up the note and threw it into his locker. “Fuck,” she said.

“Are you okay?”

“That was me,” she said. “That was
me!
What a sick, twisted bastard.”

Ephraim leaned into the locker and retrieved the note, struck by a sudden thought. He smoothed out the note and examined the handwriting. It looked like Nathan's.
Nate's.

“I know why he did it,” Ephraim said.

“What?” Zoe checked the time on her phone and looked down the hall anxiously.

“I know why Nate left me those instructions the day I found the coin! He wasn't helping me at all. He was trying to help himself.”

“That sounds about right.”

It was just like what had happened with Nathaniel and his partner. Nate had been stranded in Ephraim's universe, the controller useless without the coin to complete it. “He wasn't sure yet that the coin would work for another Ephraim, so he decided to test it out on me.” Maybe Nathaniel had told Nate and the other Ephraim about using the coin apart from the controller, and they'd never mentioned it to Zoe.

She tapped the note. “What are we going to do?”

“I don't know. Maybe I can reason with him.”

She snorted.

The bell rang for homeroom, and Zoe slammed his locker door shut. “Shit, we have to get to class. Get moving.” She propelled him down the hall. The rest of the students had already disappeared, like roaches scuttling away from a bright light.

“Why are you so freaked? Hold on! I don't even know where my first class is,” Ephraim said.

“We share the same schedule until third period. I'll fill you in on the rest. Come on! You don't want to be caught in the halls between classes.”

Zoe stopped in front of a classroom door, where Ephraim used to take Algebra. She pulled him inside as the last bell ended.

The classroom was stifling. The windows were closed, and twenty other students sat at their desks staring at the front of the room, sweat pouring down their faces.

“Where's the teacher?” Ephraim said as they took two seats in the back.

“No teacher for free period.”

“We just…sit here?”

“It's only forty minutes. Be quiet now. If they hear us, we'll get called to the guidance office.”

“Would that be so bad?” He bet they had air conditioning in the office, at least.

“Do they have corporal punishment where you come from?” Zoe asked.

“No fair making fun of the ignorant visitor,” Ephraim said.

“Not so loud,” she whispered. “I wish I were making this up.”

As Ephraim waited for Zoe in the cafeteria at lunch period, someone sat down across from him. Ephraim almost didn't recognize him, but it was Michael Gupal: he was thin, at least a hundred pounds lighter than his analog in Ephraim's universe.

“Hey,” Ephraim said hesitantly.

“What are you doing here?” Michael said.

“Say what?”

“He's back too, isn't he?”

“Who?”

Michael looked around nervously. “You said you'd take care of Nate.”

“I did?”

Michael looked terrified.

“What are you so afraid of?” Ephraim asked.

“You know what he's capable of.” Michael said. He hesitated then drew out a folded sheet of paper. He held onto it a little too long when Ephraim tried to take it.

“I found that in my locker this morning,” Michael said. “It's just like the other ones. I never should have believed you.”

The page had four pictures on it, reminiscent of comic book panels. The first showed Michael with a horrified look on his face, starkly lit by a camera flash. The next picture was of Michael lying in a coffin, dressed in a smart suit, his eyes closed and his skin pale and waxy. The third was a funeral, a man and a woman in black standing over a hole in the ground at a cemetery. The fourth image was of a tombstone: MICHAEL AMIR GUPAL, Beloved Son.

Ephraim thrust the paper back at Michael. “It's obviously faked. Nate is very good with Photoshop,” Ephraim said. But he knew the pictures were real—snapshots from a parallel universe, where Nate likely had done unspeakable things to one of Michael's analogs. “I wouldn't worry about it,” he said softly. The sight of Jena in the fountain flashed in his mind again. How many deaths had Ephraim caused?

Michael lowered his voice again. “You promised he was going to disappear.”

This wasn't even Ephraim's universe. Was it up to him to keep the other Ephraim's promises? He just wanted to get the controller away from Nate and get his own life back.

Then again, if Nate no longer had the controller, he would lose access to those other universes completely. He wouldn't be able to terrorize and kill freely, without fear of consequences. Ephraim might be able to protect countless other people, while also helping himself and Nathaniel return to their homes.

“I'm working on it,” Ephraim said. By getting that controller away from Nate, he'd be helping more people than just himself. “Don't worry about these pictures. Nate won't do anything to you, he can only try to frighten you.” Ephraim assumed Nate wouldn't do anything that could be traced back to him while he was stuck in his own universe. Michael was probably safe for the moment.

Michael looked behind Ephraim and scrambled up from his seat. “I hope you're right, Ephraim,” he said. He slunk away.

Zoe came around the table with a tray of food and took Michael's seat. “What did
he
want?”

“Nate's been frightening kids at school with pictures from other universes.”

Zoe grimaced. “It started out as just a game, but it's gotten more serious. Half the school hates or fears him, the other half loves him.”

“Loves him? Why?”

“He's loaded. He pays the geeks to do his homework assignments for him. He buys presents to get girls to go out with him for expensive dinners. I think even the principal is on the take. Nate practically runs the school.”

“Where does he get all that money?”

Zoe shrugged. “Other universes, I guess.”

“How long has this been going on?” he asked.

“A couple of years, since they got the coin and the controller.”

“You mean the other Ephraim was part of it?” Ephraim rubbed the back of his neck. “How could he?”

“Ephraim always went along with whatever Nate wanted.” Zoe poked at the food on her plate. “I didn't like it either. He finally decided to put a stop to it, and look what happened to him.”

“Why don't we just report Nate? In my universe, they take threats from students seriously.”

“This isn't your universe. Like I said, Nate has a way of getting what he wants.”

“Believe me, I'm aware of that.” School was a scary place. The classes were much more advanced than they'd been in the eleventh grade. Most of them seemed to be on a college level, but he supposed that made sense if school ran all year round. Physics class alone demanded advanced calculus that was far beyond his experience. He was surprised that there weren't more students as messed up as Nate.

As they ate, Ephraim related his meeting with Nathaniel the night before. He was astonished that she actually seemed angry about it.

“That asshole started all this,” she said. “He's been here all along, hiding out, while Nate got more and more powerful. My Ephraim would still be alive—” She stabbed her plastic fork into her plate, and they mutually annihilated each other in an explosion of white plastic tines and Styrofoam chips. “Why didn't he do anything?” she howled.

Ephraim ignored the faces staring at them. He lowered his voice to calm her. “What should he have done? Beat up a kid half his age? Even if he'd tried, you've seen how deranged Nate is. And he's got a gun. He may be a teenager, but that doesn't make him any less dangerous.”

“I don't know. He should have done something,” she said.

“He's willing to help now.”

“Only because he wants to go home. Just like you.”

“Zoe, that isn't fair,” he said.

They each pretended to eat for a little while, though Ephraim was just pushing food around, trying to think of something to say that wouldn't set her off again. The answer fell into his lap, literally, when someone behind him dropped a folded square of notebook paper there and hurried away. Ephraim couldn't tell who it had been.

“One of Nate's followers,” Zoe said.

“One of his victims, you mean?” Ephraim said. “Another note.” He unfolded it and read it:
Stop by after school. You know where I live.—N
²

“Cute.” He crumpled it up and shoved it into his Jell-O container. “He wants to see me,” Ephraim said.

“You aren't going,” Zoe said.

“I have to talk to him sometime.”

“Then you aren't going alone.”

“This is a good opportunity. I need him to trust me, Zoe. It's the only way I'll get close enough to steal the controller if he refuses to cooperate. We're in a stalemate right now; he needs me as much as I need him.”

“If you're sure.” She bit her lip. “Just promise to be careful.”

Ephraim wasn't sure at all, but he knew he had to do this. If he didn't show up, or if he brought someone with him, Nate would know he was afraid, and that would make him more vulnerable. Besides, he wasn't going to put Zoe in danger. Nate had already killed her once.

“Don't worry about me,” Ephraim said, hoping it was more than optimism.